


Icarus

by quinnieonmain



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Extended Metaphors, Goodbye Despair, Komahina - Freeform, M/M, Major SDR2 Spoilers, Major character death - Freeform, at least it's like. semi-eloquent lmao, eloquent writing, semi-graphic depictions of violence i suppose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26483272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quinnieonmain/pseuds/quinnieonmain
Summary: Nagito Komaeda is Icarus, and he is flying too close to an astounding sun that's taken the form of a teenage boy.(Or, the author can't write descriptions well and summarizes it in a wanna-be-poetic way- essentially a short retelling of the events up to chapter 5 of sdr2, in the form of an extended metaphor about the greek myth of icarus. MAJOR sdr2 spoilers ahead!!!!)
Relationships: Hinata Hajime/Komaeda Nagito
Comments: 16
Kudos: 59





	Icarus

Nagito Komaeda is Icarus.

He knows this to be a fact a few weeks after meeting Hajime Hinata. Hajime is the sun, and Nagito is soaring towards him, unable to pull himself away from his light. Maybe that’s his classmate’s true talent; the Ultimate Light. He dismisses the thought everytime it crosses his mind, which is quite often, because it doesn’t make sense. After all, it seems that his is the only life that Hajime’s light seems to truly shine upon.

Nagito Komaeda is Icarus. 

He knows this to be true because his situation is too comparable for this to be some grand delusion. (Although on some level he understands that that’s what his thoughts almost always are.) His life before Hope’s Peak was the sweltering Labyrinth, and he was trapped, knowing that he would never accomplish anything- scratch that. He knew that he couldn’t ever help anyone infinitely more important than him accomplish anything worthwhile. He had given up on the foolish idea of doing something good by himself long ago and had since resigned himself to the knowledge that the best he could do is help someone more important on the way to the top of the world, and that in itself was an honor.

His escape from his own personal Labyrinth began when he opened an envelope in the mail and found an invitation to Hope’s Peak Academy. He was carried out of that cursed, stifling maze by the gust of wind that was the school’s near insistence on his attendance. Perhaps his luck could bring good things after all- among the Ultimates of that legendary school he could make himself useful. 

That island- Jabberwock Island, or the location of their heart-throbbing school trip- was the open sky. Immediately he knew that this place would be where he would make himself a stepping stool for the hope that he appreciated and worshipped above anything else. The possibilities were endless- no longer would be trapped in the suffocating Labyrinth of hopelessness, doomed to sit alone with nothing but thoughts of his eventual demise for the rest of time.

He knew all this as the walls fell down with a flash of light from Usami’s wand, as the ocean breeze carried the scent of saltwater across the coast, and as the waves lapped against the shore. 

And then, he saw the sun. The sun was far from its usual place in the sky; instead, it was passed out on the beach in the form of a teenage boy.

As he stared at the sun, Nagito thought about how perhaps staring was improper, and dismissed the thought, because who would be able to look away? He was beautiful. Nagito couldn’t pinpoint why- objectively, the boy was painfully average-looking, with tanned skin, spiky brown hair, and a simple but strangely semi formal outfit of dark slacks, a button-down shirt, and a green tie. Absolutely nothing about him stood out at first glance. But Nagito thought it might have had something to do with the way freckles dotted his skin, or the way he looked so peaceful that the ultimate lucky student considered sitting down with him for a fleeting second, or something of the sort.

When the boy woke up, presumably from Nagito’s gentle questioning, he thought that perhaps the true reason he was clearly the sun was something about his eyes. They looked like green pools, or gemstones, or something else utterly, stupidly cliche to go with the image of infinite hazel eyes.

Nagito Komaeda was Icarus, and he was soaring, held aloft by wings of hope as he found himself unable to alter his path towards the sun.

The sun, the boy called Hajime Hinata who didn’t know his own ultimate talent, wanted nothing to do with Nagito after the first class trial.

“Is this who you truly are?”

Yes, it was. Nagito despised most things about himself and who he was, but he knew that his passion for hope and his willingness to go so far for it wasn’t one of the many things that made him so awful. And yet…

A dark cloud had passed over the sun’s face as he uttered those words in Monokuma’s courtroom, and for the first time since leaving that note in Togami’s mailbox, Nagito felt a pang of regret. Maybe he’d come close to flying too close to the sun, but his wax wings made of hope wouldn’t ever melt. Despite Hajime’s newfound hatred of him, they wouldn’t melt, because what Hajime didn’t understand was that this was what he was meant to do. Nagito Komaeda wasn’t meant to live peacefully on this island while he waited around for one of his classmates to kill. He had to start things off because he had to be a stepping stone. He desperately tried to tell the others this but their faces were filled with a mix of emotions that didn’t seem to quite fit with the way Nagito thought of his own words. 

Nagito Komaeda was Icarus, and he was trying not to get too close to the sun. 

But it was so difficult, wasn’t it? He kept finding himself going back to Hajime during investigations, kept spending his time reading with him in the library, kept accepting gifts. Why did Hajime offer gifts? He didn’t deserve them. He wanted to tell Hajime this but couldn’t find the words and instead expressed his gratitude over dramatically, telling him how thankful he was for anything he could’ve ever received from the other.

Yet he tried to keep at least a bit of distance- he never let Hajime get too close. That would be disgustingly selfish, wouldn’t it? So he didn’t try to explain himself much at the trials anymore. It was better if the group thought of him as some hope-obsessed freak, because then they might kill him, and then they could get away from Jabberwock Island and bring hope to a despair-filled world! They were Ultimates- that was their purpose. To move forward, away from this island, and bring about true hope. Even if none of them quite believed it, Nagito knew without a doubt that this was the undeniable truth.

But they wouldn’t kill him. He didn’t think he’d ever understand why nobody in a group of students that despised him wouldn’t kill him.

Nagito Komaeda was Icarus, and despite his best efforts, he realized in the Final Dead Room that he had gotten too close to the sun after all. 

Hajime Hinata was talentless. He was no better than Nagito. When Nagito found out, he couldn’t breathe for a few seconds, and felt his legs grow weak. He fell hard against the wall of the Octagon, feeling as if he was sinking both physically and mentally. He was sinking, he was falling through the once endless sky, he was drowning but gasping for breath anyway. It was at that moment that he realized that maybe he really had gotten too close to the sun, and now he was spiraling downwards at an alarming rate, falling headfirst towards the crashing waves miles below, unable to use the wings he’d relied on so much just a few moments before.

He wanted to scream until his throat was hoarse at the despair of it all.

That couldn’t be true, could it? How could the sun itself be talentless? 

But Monokuma hadn’t lied to them before, and what would be the purpose of lying now? Despite his growing sense of what could only be described as complete and total despair at the words written so plainly in Hajime’s file, and his unwillingness to believe what he read, he knew that it was true. Perhaps, he thought, the sun wasn’t so bright after all.

Or at least it shouldn’t have been so bright. He forced himself to talk down to Hajime as soon as he learned the truth and ignored the way his selfish brain screamed at him to stop. He wanted to believe the cruel words he said to Hajime, but couldn’t bring himself to. He wanted to hate this stupid boy with endless eyes and thousands of freckles that he wanted to trace lines in between like a child’s connect-the-dots, this boy that had passed out on the beach that he’d fallen for immediately, this boy that he’d idly thought of as his own Ultimate Light. 

Hate, he quickly realized, could not be forced so easily.

Nagito Komaeda was Icarus. He had flown too close to the sun, and now he was falling through the sky towards a glistening ocean that would kill him as he fought that growing feeling of despair, the feeling that he despised more than any other. 

Nagito Komaeda was Icarus, and he decided as he spiraled downwards that he would kill himself before ocean waves could drag the life and hope out of him. 

Nagito Komaeda was Icarus. He knew this as he drove a truck filled with fireworks disguised as dynamite to the factory of Monokuma dolls.

Nagito Komaeda was Icarus. He knew this as he oh-so-carefully filled a fire grenade with poisonous gas. 

Nagito Komaeda was Icarus. He knew this as he tied his legs with lengths of rope. He thought about how foolish it had been to think that he could’ve possibly stayed away from the sun as he covered his lips with a strip of duct tape. He knew that he was Icarus, nothing more than a child so blinded by the shining sun and the hope it filled him with, as he stabbed his own thighs and screamed in pain, the sound muffled by the tape over his mouth. He knew that he was Icarus, and he had become too confident in his flimsy wings of wax and hope, as he propped the same knife he’d usd a moment before up against one of those stupid Monokuma dolls and then shoved his hand through it and tossed the toy away. 

Nagito Komaeda was Icarus. He wondered if Icarus, too, had thought only of the sun as he fell through the sky. 

Nagito Komaeda was Icarus, and as he distantly heard a row of neatly lined up cardboard cutouts fall like dominoes, he thought about the sun. He thought about the sun instead of the pain in his arm and his legs and his hand as he watched the lighter he’d set up tip over. He thought about the sun, covered in freckles that looked like they’d been flicked on with a paintbrush in a middle school art classroom, as he heard the fire grenades shatter against the hard ground. He thought about the sun, with infinite hazel eyes that might as well have been the spear hanging above him for how piercing they could be during trials, as he took in a final shaky breath and felt the air, thicker than it would’ve been without the poison he’d been so careful with back in his cottage, invade his lungs. He thought about the sun, his Ultimate Light, Hajime Hinata, the talentless Reserve Course student that somehow meant more to him than any of the true Ultimates, as he lost his grip on the spear. 

There are two feelings that invade his brain as he dies. One is that he is in worse pain than he’s ever known and if he wasn’t already so weak he might still be screaming in agony, and the other is that he thinks he might have been in love with the unreachable sun this whole time.

If he were still alive when they turned on, the sprinklers might’ve felt nice.

Nagito Komaeda was Icarus, and as he died he wished he had been able to get a bit closer to the sun before his inevitable fall.

**Author's Note:**

> whoaaa hi there!! i'm so very sorry for not posting anything in like a month- rest assured i have been a writing machine, i've just been working on a whole lot of stuff!! (hanahaki/soulmate au, hajime dies and later haunts nagito au, not-so-imaginary-friend au as well as a saiouma oneshot inspired by a studio killers song- any preferences for which i should work on most? can't make any promises but i'll try n prioritize it!!)  
> anway, i hope y'all liked this- i had a lot of fun writing it even if i did cry just a bit haha. as always, comments and kudos are so appreciated <3


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